Bush was given hijack warning by British intelligence

Americans were told of attack threat, say MI5 and MI6, as
Marines begin new operation against al-Qa'ida

By Andrew Gumbel and Jason Bennetto

18 May 2002

President Bush's CIA briefing last August about possible attacks
on US targets by al-Qa'ida – the focus of the current "what did he
know and when did he know it" furore – was based on British
intelligence reports, officials on both sides of the Atlantic
said.

Intelligence sources in London confirmed yesterday that both MI5
and MI6 had sent reports to the United States in the run-up to 11
September, suggesting that America was under threat.

The reports did not mention a specific plan or method of attack,
however, and speculated that the most likely targets were overseas
American interests such as embassies or military bases.

In Washington, meanwhile, government officials spoken to by
The New York Times suggested Mr Bush's briefing on 6 August
at his ranch in Texas was a rehash of 1998 intelligence data "drawn
from a single British source".

Both the unnamed officials and Condoleezza Rice, the National
Security Adviser, said the report contained speculation that Osama
bin Laden's organisation might be thinking of hijacking planes, but
there was no hint that they might be used as weapons of mass
destruction in a suicide mission.

Ms Rice said in a news briefing on Thursday: "It [the report]
mentioned hijacking, but hijacking in the traditional sense ... The
most important and most likely thing was that they would take over
an airliner holding passengers and demand the release of one of
their operatives."

US law enforcement has repeatedly received word over the past few
years of plans to try to spring Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called
"Blind Sheikh", from federal prison where he is serving a life
sentence for his role in plotting a bomb attack on the World Trade
Centre in 1993.

It was not clear from Ms Rice's words whether he was the
"operative" she was referring to, but in any case she made clear
that the speculation was based on long-standing thinking in the
intelligence community, not new data.

"It was an analytic report that talked about UBL's [Mr bin
Laden's] methods of operations, talked about what he had done
historically," Ms Rice said. "I want to reiterate: it's not a
warning. There's not specific time, place or method mentioned."

Barring the emergence of documentary evidence contradicting the
official line – and none has so far come to light – it seems hard to
argue that Mr Bush was negligent in his handling of the information
he received.

According to Ms Rice's account, there was a great deal of
nervousness about terror attacks in the early part of last summer,
but the focus was on preventing possible attacks on the G8 summit in
Genoa.

There was also specific concern about US interests in Paris, Rome
and Turkey, which has since been substantiated by the arrest of
numerous suspected al-Qa'ida operatives believed to have been
planning assaults on the US embassies in France and Italy and an
American military base in Turkey.

The most damning evidence of negligence pre-11 September remains,
for the moment, below White House level, with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency and immigration
officials, who had a tantalising string of leads that they failed to
follow up or pass on to their political masters.